There are so many people in our community who are doing great things and who are helping to make great things happen.

The list is only a sample and people are encouraged to suggest others.

Let’s acknowledge the people who help to make our community the great place it is.

Today, we look at our sporting greats. From Ariarne Titmus to Dane-Bird-Smith and Steve Renouf, our area is packed with world-class sporting talent. Tomorrow, we look at the west’s arts and music honour call.

LAURA GEITZ

While recently retired and hard at work raising her new son Barney, Brookfield’s Laura Geitz will cast a long shadow over the booming sport of netball for years.

The 31-year-old hung up her goalkeeper bib for good last year after a glittering career that included three grand final wins as captain of the Queensland Firebirds, World Cup glory and Commonwealth Games gold as captain of the Australian Diamonds in 2014.

She has won a silver medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and gold at the 2011 World Netball Championships.

She also captained the AIS Canberra Darters in the Commonwealth Bank Trophy.

Geitz,who had a remarkable 32 Test Caps for Australia, was honoured with the Liz Ellis Diamonds Award in 2011.

She announced her retirement from international team duties in July last year, having been capped 71 times for her country.

Soon after, she retired from domestic netball as well, ending her career with 169 domestic league caps and two Player of the Year awards (2011 and 2014) in the old ANZ Championship competition.

In May this year, she was honoured with the unveiling of a statue at the State Netball Centre.

PAUL WHITE

The Broncos CEO, from Bardon, has weathered some tough times lately, most notably the sacking of coach Wayne Bennett, but the former policeman and mining executive also has had plenty of high points in his nine-year tenure, most notably his work leading to the construction of the team’s $27 million Red Hill high-performance centre.

The club is also a national benchmark for financial health within the code.

In early 2011 he took over from Bruno Cullen as Broncos CEO.

It was far from his first high-powered corporate role.

He spent the previous five years in senior positions with Anglo American Metallurgical Coal and before that was with Xstrata Zinc.

He also served for almost 20 years in the Queensland Police Service.

White played rugby league with the North Queensland and Central Queensland teams, and was a coach at the Queensland Academy of Sport Emerging Origin Players program and the states’s under-17 side.

In 2015 he faced one of the most serious challenges of his life when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

GORDEN TALLIS

A Bardon resident, Tallis is a legend of league, making his indelible mark on the game in the 1990s and 2000s.

The former Origin and International legend was once regarded as the best second-row forward in the world.

A Queensland State of Origin and Australian international representative second-row forward, he captained both these teams as well as the Brisbane Broncos with whom he won the 1997, 1998 and 2000 Grand Finals, after starting his career with the St. George Dragons in Sydney.

Nicknamed the “Raging Bull” for his on-field aggression, in 2008 he was named in an Indigenous Australian rugby league team of the century.

He is currently a commentator and pandit for the Fox Sports network.

He served as a National Rugby League board member and was a member of the board of directors for the North Queensland Cowboys.

Tallis also worked on the coaching staff of the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

During the 2007 season at the Broncos’ 20-year anniversary celebration, the club announced a list of the 20 best players to play for them to date which included Tallis.

In 2010, Tallis was inducted into the Broncos official Hall of Fame.

DANE BIRD-SMITH

The son of former Australian two-time Olympic walker David Smith has the sport in his blood.

He and his father have a friendly rivalry, with Dane beating his father’s times in the 1500m, 3000m and 5000m and closing in on his 10,000m and 20,000m marks.

“I want him to beat those times and be better than me,” David said.

Bird-Smith initially took up athletics but focused on the 400m.

However he switched to race walking as a teenager and began to be coached by his father.

A former Indooroopilly State High and St Peters Lutheran product, he reached the apex of his career after winning gold in the 20km walk at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

The son of former Olympic walker David Smith, he recently revealed a battle with depression but has shown the courage that means he is an obvious choice for the westside’s most influential list.

Bird-Smith won bronze at the Rio Olympics and represented Australia at the World Championships in Athletics three times and has appeared four times at the IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships.

ARIARNE TITMUS

The Auchenflower freestyler won three gold and a silver at the Gold Coast Games, cementing her reputation as a star of the future.

In 2015, Titmus and her family moved from Tasmania to Queensland for better training opportunities.

She competed in the women’s 200 metre freestyle event at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships.

At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Titmus won gold in the 4 x 200 metre freestyle event. On 14 December 2018 she set a new world record in the women’s short course 400m freestyle competition of the 2018 FINA World Swimming Championships with a time of 3:53.92, breaking the record set by Wang Jianjiahe two months earlier by 0.05 seconds.

Titmus was selected as one of the 27 swimmers to represent Australia at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.

After finishing second in her heat of the women’s 400 metre freestyle, she won the gold medal and broke the Oceania record in the final with a time of 3:58.76, a full second ahead of American swimmer Katie Ledecky.

Known as the Terminator, “Arnie” Titmus’s titanic performance ended one of swimming’s greatest streaks.

Titmus was also the 2018 National Local Sports Stars winner.

MITCH LARKIN

The “Larkinator’’, a backstroke specialist is part of the legendary Dean Boxall’s St Peters Western team, won gold in the 200m backstroke and silver in the 50m and 100m events at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

He has also won two gold in the 100m and 200m backstroke at the 2015 FINA world championships in Kazan, Russia.

His personal best in long course events are 52.11 seconds for the 100m backstroke and 1:53.17 for the 200m backstroke, both set at the Dubai world cup in November 2015.

In November 2015, Larkin broke the short course world record in the 200m backstroke, lowering it to 1:45.63.

At the 2016 Summer Olympics swimming championships, he represented Australia in the 100m and 200m backstroke and the 4 x 100m medley relay.

In the 100m backstroke, Larkin was the third fastest in the heats with a time of 53.04 and third fastest out of the two second semi-final heats with a time of 52.70.

Larkin set a record as the first swimmer to win every backstroke event and also the most gold medals for a swimmer at a single Commonwealth Games event.

He was in the headlines earlier this year after a bitter split with swimmer Emily Seebohm.

CEDRIC DUBLER

It seemed like all of The Gap jumped on social media to cheer Cedric Dubler at last year’s Gold Coast Commonwealth Games when he won bronze in the decathlon.

It was the finest hour yet for the towering, 191cm athlete who, two years earlier, became Australia’s first decathlete in 16 years to compete at an Olympics.

In the end, he placed 14th at those Games, in Rio de Janeiro, but won our hearts.

It was also fitting that the public opened up on social media, as Dubler was at one point a weekly poster of vlogs (video blogs).

Dubler, a Payne Rd State School past student, made his first big mark in the gruelling sport in 2012, aged just 17, after placing fourth at the IAAF U20 World Junior Championships held that year in Barcelona.

In 2014 he clinched silver at the same championships, setting a former Oceania Junior Record of 8094 points.

The 21-year-old Aspley Little Athletics product, Australia’s first Olympic decathlete since Scott Ferrier in Sydney, nearly took out a cameraman during the javelin at the Rio Games after a wonky release — it went sideways instead of straight.

He is coached by Eric Brown at Queensland University Athletics.

MADDIE AND JACINTA EDMUNDS

Former The Gap sisters and Payne Rd State School students, Maddie and Jacinta Edmunds, have long been stars in rowing circles.

Jacinta joined her older sister last year on the Australian senior team for the World Cup.

The 188cm-tall Maddie, who recently switched to Australian football after tiring of rowing, made her first Australian team aged 16 when she represented her country at the world junior championships and has been a fixture around Australian rowing teams since.

In 2016 she followed in the footsteps of her father, 1984 Olympic bronze medallist Ian, by making the Rio Olympic team.

Jacinta’s debut for Queensland came in the 2012 youth eight which contested the Bicentennial Cup at the Interstate Regatta within the Australian Rowing Championships.

Senior state honours came in 2018 when she rowed behind Maddie in Queensland’s women’s eight, contesting the Queen’s Cup at the 2018 Interstate Regatta.

Earlier this year, she stroked the Queensland women’s eight who placed fourth in the Queen’s Cup.

Maddie (Madeleine) made her first state representative selection came at age 16 in 2008 in the Queensland youth eight, who contested and won the Bicentennial Cup at the Interstate Regatta within the Australian Rowing Championships.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 she made three further appearances in the Queensland youth eight for three further wins.

On six occasions from 2012 to 2018 she was selected in Queensland senior women’s eights competing for the Queen’s Cup at the Interstate Regatta.

MIRON BLEIBERG

Fig Tree Pocket-based Miron Bleiberg rose to fame in the Sunshine State as a Queensland Roar and, later, Gold Coast United football coach.

These days he is better known in business circles for his interests in real estate and service stations.

A former captain in the Israeli Navy, Bleiberg commanded patrol boats and missile boats, as well as coaching a fourth-tier football league team.

After moving to Australia, he coached Melbourne Croatia and three other Victorian clubs before joining the Brisbane Strikers.

He later had a string of successes in the Queensland Premier League with NorthStar and Queensland Lions.

Appointed the coach of the Queensland Roar for the inaugural season of the A-League.

Bleiberg’s outspoken views and colourful quotes made many headlines.

After the Roar slipped from an auspicious start to the 2006/7 season to fourth position following Round 15, he resigned and was replaced by former Socceroos coach Frank Farina.

ALLAN BORDER

If you’re known by millions just by your first name, or your initials, then you have made it.

A.B., as the cricketing legend is universally known, has lived in Chapel Hill since his retirement.

Apart from occasional commentating gigs, he is also still regarded as a respected and influential voice in cricket circles.

He played 156 Tests, a then record, once also held the record for consecutive Tests (153) and is second on the list of Tests as a captain.

A great left hand batsman and sometime left arm orthodox spinner, he scored 11,174 Test runs including 27 centuries and retired as Australia’s most-capped in both Tests and One Day Internationals.

His Australian record for Test Match runs stood for 15 years before Ricky Ponting overtook him during the Third Ashes Test against England in July 2009.

Border was one of the 55 inaugural inductees of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, he was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for his role as a “sports legend”.

In 2016, Border was a recipient of the Queensland Greats Awards.

And in a fan poll conducted by the CA in 2017, he was named in the country’s best Ashes XI in the last 40 years.

A cricket field at Albion and nets at Valley Cricket in Ashgrove are both named after him.

STEVE RENOUF

With 242 elite-level matches and 185 tries under his belt, former Broncos centre and Red Hill local Steve Renouf is an obvious entry on our power list.

But equally, the Murgon-born, proud Aborigine is known for his long advocacy for indigenous people right across Queensland.

One of the rugby league’s genuine nice guys, the Murgon Mustangs junior developed his game with the Broncos in his teen years before making his first grade NSWRL premiership debut in the 1989 Broncos season.

He was the Broncos’ top try scorer of the 1991 and 1992 seasons and played centre for the Brisbane Broncos in their win at the 1998 NRL grand final.

Renouf travelled with the Kangaroos to England for the 1992 World Cup Final.

Over a decade after leaving the Broncos he was still the club’s all-time leading try scorer, with 142 tries.

In 2006 Renouf became the seventh former player inducted into the Broncos Hall of Fame.

The next year, the club announced a list of the 20 best players to play for them to date which included Renouf.

In 2008 he was named at centre in the Indigenous Team of the Century

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